Figured out SQLServer’s reporting service was stealthily using the port 80, disguised as a system process! Yuck! So, stopping this service fixes the port issue but whoa – no luck yet – XAMPP won’t want to come up!

Thanks to apache error logs, this time, the culprit turned out to be the path! XAMPP was installed under “\program files” while all the 32 bit apps are installed under “Program files (x86)” in Win7 64!

And all the httpd.conf and php.ini files were pointing to “\program files”.

So, just moved the XAMPP installation from “program files (x86)” to “program files” and voila – all’s well!